Comment If you can't beat them... (Score 2) 209
If you can't beat them, join them.
Comment Re:For those of us looking to buy a 3D printer (Score 2) 213
Did you happen to see the Formlabs Form 1 printer? They were at Maker Faire too. They're running a Kickstarter right now, and from the photos and video on there the parts that machine produces look far better than most anything else I've seen. I watched the video of the Tinkerines Ditto on IndieGoGo and the parts didn't look anywhere near as finely-detailed.
I'm quite interested in learning more about the Form 1 and it would be great if someone had a first-hand experience from maker Faire (I'm in Seattle and couldn't attend).
Comment Logitech Alert (Score 1) 508
Logitech has a system that I purchased for my home: Logitech Alert.
You didn't specify exactly what you meant by "cheap," but you can get a full six-camera system (the max # of cameras it will support) for around $1,000.
720p cameras, motion detection, video stored on SD cards in each camera and copied to your PC, remote access, email alerts... It's got pretty much everything.
The best part is how ridiculously easy it is to set up. The system uses your home's electrical wiring to communicate between the cameras and the base system, so you literally just plug everything in and you're up and running. I was shocked at how easy it was to set up.
Here's some sample video from the camera on my front porch (which, by the way, I exported from their software to YouTube in just one or two clicks).
Google Docs' OCR Quality Tested 99
orenh writes "Google has released a Google Docs application for Android, which includes the ability to create documents by OCR-ing photos. I tested the application's OCR quality and found that it's mediocre under the best conditions and poor under real-world conditions. However, I believe that this poor performance is caused in part by an intentional decision by Google."
Is Science Just a Matter of Faith? 1486
Hugh Pickens writes "Pastabagel writes that the actual scientific answers to the questions of the origins of the universe, the evolution of man, and the fundamental nature of the cosmos involve things like wave equations and quantum electrodynamics and molecular biology that very few non-scientists can ever hope to understand and that if we are honest with ourselves, we must admit that we accept the incredibly complex scientific phenomena in physics, astronomy, and biology through the process of belief, not through reason. When Richard Fenyman wrote, 'I think I can safely say that nobody understands quantum mechanics,' he was including himself which is disconcerting given how many books he wrote on that very subject. The fact is that it takes years of dedicated study before scientific truth in its truest, mathematical and symbolic forms can be understood. The rest of us rely on experts to explain it, someone who has seen and understood the truth and can dumb it down for us in a language we can understand. And therein lies the big problem for science and scientists. For most people, science is really a matter of trusting the expert who tells it to us and believing what they tell us. Trust and belief. Faith. Not understanding. How can we understand science, if we can't understand the language of science? 'We don't learn science by doing science, we learn science by reading and memorizing. The same way we learn history. Do you really know what an atom is, or that a Higgs boson is a rather important thing, or did you simply accept they were what someone told you they were?'"
Sony Lawyers Expand Dragnet, Targeting Anybody Posting PS3 Hack 437
markass530 writes with this excerpt from Wired:
"Sony is threatening to sue anybody posting or 'distributing' the first full-fledged jailbreak code for the 4-year-old PlayStation 3 gaming console. What's more, the company is demanding that a federal judge order Google to surrender the IP addresses and other identifying information (PDF) of those who have viewed or commented about the jailbreak video on a private YouTube page. The game maker is also demanding that Twitter provide the identities of a host of hackers who first unveiled a limited version of the hack in December."
ESRB Exposes Emails of Gamers Who Filed Privacy Complaints 75
simrook writes, "Many people filed privacy complaints with the ESRB over Blizzard's recent (and afterward recanted) move to require the display of users' real life names on Blizzard's official forums. 961 of those complainants had their email addresses exposed in the ESRB's response." The response itself didn't go into the organization's thoughts on Blizzard's plan, but they explained to the Opposable Thumbs blog that anonymity isn't a huge concern to them, as long as users are given the opportunity to opt out.
"The role of the ESRB Privacy Online program is to make sure that member websites—those that display our seal on their pages — are compliant with an increasingly complex series of privacy protection laws and are offering a secure space for users to interact and do business online. ... But online privacy protection doesn't necessarily mean the same thing as anonymity. It's about making sure that websites collecting personal information from users are doing so not only in accordance with federal regulations but also with best practices for protecting individuals' personal information online."
Court Takes Away Some of the Public Domain 431
An anonymous reader writes "In yet another bad ruling concerning copyright, a federal appeals court has overturned a lower court ruling, and said that it's okay for Congress retroactively to remove works from the public domain, even if publishers are already making use of those public-domain works. The lower court had said this was a First Amendment violation, but the appeals court said that if Congress felt taking away from the public domain was in its best interests, then there was no First Amendment violation at all. The ruling effectively says that Congress can violate the First Amendment, so long as it feels it has heard from enough people (in this case, RIAA and MPAA execs) to convince it that it needs to do what it has done." TechDirt notes that the case will almost certainly be appealed.
Rumor of Betelgeuse's Death Greatly Exaggerated 356
The Bad Astronomer writes "A rumor is spreading on the Net like wildfire that the red supergiant star Betelgeuse is about to explode in a supernova. This rumor is almost certainly not true. First, it's posted on a doomsday forum. Second, it's three times removed from the source, and is anonymous at each step. Third, the evidence is shaky at best. Plus, even if true, the supernova is too far away to hurt us. But other than that ..."
Publishers Campaign For Universal E-Book Format 348
As the battle rages for control of the e-book market, publishers are starting to unite behind a common desire: a universal e-book format. David Shanks, chief executive at Penguin Group USA, said, "Our fondest wish is that all the devices become agnostic so that there isn’t proprietary formats and you can read wherever you want to read. First we have to get a standard that everybody embraces." The company's president, Susan Petersen Kennedy, explained that book publishers did not want to "make the same mistakes as the music industry, which had an epic struggle over electronic distribution and piracy and lost huge market share."
Pedestrian Follows Google Map, Gets Run Over, Sues 699
Hugh Pickens writes "The Toronto Star reports that a Utah woman is suing Google for more than $100,000 in damages, claiming its maps function gave her walking directions that led her onto a major highway, where she was struck by a car. Lauren Rosenberg sought directions between two addresses in Utah about 3 kilometers apart and the top result suggested that she follow a busy rural highway for several hundred meters. The highway did not have sidewalks or any other pedestrian-friendly amenities, and Rosenberg was struck by a car. Rosenberg filed suit against both the driver of the car that struck her and Google, claiming both carried responsibility in her injury. Her lawyers claim Google is liable because it did not warn her that the route would not offer a safe place for a pedestrian to walk. Google has pointed out that the directions Rosenberg sought come with a warning of caution for pedestrians, but Rosenberg claims that she accessed the Maps function on her Blackberry mobile device, where it did not include the warning."
Breakthroughs In HTML Audio Via Manipulation With JavaScript 141
jamienk writes "Imagine if you could grab and manipulate audio with JavaScript just like you can images with Canvas. Firefox experimental builds let you do just that: crazy audio visualizations, a graphic equalizer, even text-to-speech, all in JavaScript! Work in progress; you need a special build of Firefox (videos available), being worked on via W3C."
Sony To Detail "Premium PSN" Plans At E3 171
ranulf writes "VG247 is reporting that Sony will reveal their plans for 'premium PSN' services next month at E3, even though they've long stated that one of the PS3's advantages over the 360 is that they offer PSN for free. In addition to the premium services, they intend to offer a free PSN game to subscribers each month (from a choice of 'two to four games'), which should make the premium PSN effectively free if you already bought a game every month. VG247's source claims 'nothing planned will impact the service’s current free aspects,' and that 'there’s nothing in the premium package which will gimp regular PSN users.'"
Drifting Satellite Could Knock Out Cable TV 217
A few days back we discussed some of the problems caused by the demise of Intelsat's Galaxy 15, including possible degradation of GPS and its WAAS refinement. Now reader crimeandpunishment writes in with another damage scenario, one which could affect vastly more people — interference with cable TV programming across the US. "A TV communications satellite is drifting out of control thousands of miles above the Earth, threatening to wander into another satellite's orbit... Galaxy 15 continues to receive and transmit satellite signals, and they will probably interfere with the second satellite, known as AMC 11, if Galaxy 15 drifts into its orbit as expected around May 23... [A spokesman] said one option would be using AMC 11's propulsion system to shift that satellite about 60 miles (100 kilometers) away to an orbit that's still within its carefully prescribed 'orbital box' but as far away as possible from Galaxy 15."
Will Game Cartridges Make a Comeback? 277
sk8pmp writes "With the cost of solid state memory going down, will we see the return of the game cartridge? Or will digital distribution reign supreme and transition our entertainment into the cloud? This editorial explores the beginnings of the cartridge vs. disc battle of the '90s and theorizes a second one in the future. 'Imagine if you could marry the vast spaces of discs with the blazing fast speeds of solid state memory. Can you say "no more load times"? You pop the game into the top of the console, so the game is sticking out the top like in ye olden times, and you could see the sweet artwork on the front of the cartridge. The nostalgia is killing me!'"
